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Friday, February 25, 2005

Japanese Lessons

In Japan, lot of community volunteer groups have Japanese lessons very cheaply. Some of my friends go to a town about 15 minutes from here (Tokai) every Saturday morning for them. I went for a couple of weeks, and the teachers and fellow students were great, but as you can guess, I quickly tired of that silly routine of never getting to sleep in, so I dropped out.So now I take private lessons from a very nice and well reputed Japanese teacher named Honda Sensei (isn't that a great Japanese name?). Yes, I pay a pretty penny for them, but frankly for me it is worth it. Thursday night I had my first class, and it was really pretty fun! Perhaps a better word for it would be intense, in that it was an hour and a half of pure work. My first class was primarily Honda Sensei trying to feel out where I was in my level of understanding and ability to speak. But we still managed to cover about four basic grammar structures and new vocab.I'm not sure I've really talked about my language acquisition on the blog much (which is odd, since that is what I studied in college and all...) but I am doing okay now. For the first four months (pre-Christmas) I was just overwhelmed and confused and not wanting to study the language at all. But coming back gave me a fresh attitude, which was desperately needed. They say the number one determiner of language learning ability is attitude. And emersion, of course. So now I have both of those things going for me. This should be a piece of cake, right? :)Gambatteru! I am trying my best!